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I have a site www.mydomain.com that has some content for everyone, and some for registered users (but registration is free).
Links on the main page include links to pages that require registration. I run ASP.
If a surfer (or spider) hits a page that is for registered users, they are redirected to the login page. The login page URL includes the page they were trying to access. So
www.mysite.com/membercontent1.asp REDIRECTS to
www.mysite.com/login.asp?redir=membercontent1.asp
if the visitor has not signed in.
Once a user signs in, they are redirected to the page they originally requested, in the example above membercontent1.asp
In Google (And that "Y" engine) I'm seeing the same thing. All my member content pages are listed with the right URL (www.mysite.com/membercontent1.asp, for example) but the Description and Title in the SERPS are always the same.... The Login page!
So it looks in the SERPS results like I have 15-20 pages with different names/urls, but identical content. I'm sure that's not a good thing.
So what should I do? I know on Google News, for example, some of the pages redirect me to log in or register to view them. I thought that was cloaking, but reputable news sites seem to be doing it - letting the spider in to view the actual content, but not the surfer without a valid login.
So do I
1) noindex the login page?
2) noindex the member content pages?
If I do those things, will my site appear smaller and therefore less important because the spiders will see fewer pages?
Or do I allow googlebot, slurp, et-al access to the actual content, so each page is listed as they are today but reflecting the content that is actually there (once an end user registers free and signs in)
Is that cloaking? I'm trying to do the right thing here.
Thanks for reading, and if anyone has suggestions, I'd welcome them!
Can anyone help me out with an opinion?
Thanks
